We spoke briefly about the decorating options, and how best to make use of the material and templates for creating brick and roof tile effects. The supplied templates remind me strangely of the keyboard overlays we had for our rubber-keyed ZX Spectrum, are of a size that they don't actually fit any of the papered 'wall' areas of the house - they're too long for the side quarters and too short for the longer front door - so we'll have to trim them down and do lots of matching. The idea is that you stick them in place with a temporary spray glue (which cannot be sold online as it can't be put in the post!), plaster on the brick/roof tile compound mixed with water, wait for it to dry, then peel it off and do the next section. It's likely to be a rather laborious process... and, just to make it even more laborious (while hopefully improving the end result), I suggested that we might fill out the exterior walls with the 'sandstone' compound so that they're flush with the black-painted frame, giving us a background for the brick pattern which would look like cement... though we may end up just using a matte paint to fill in the lines. A larger template is favoured for the roof, to minimise all the fiddling and matching, so we may have to keep looking...
The general consensus seems to be that painting the interior is preferable to repapering. One room seemed to be in a fit state to leave as-is, until a closer inspection revealed that the four screws holding the wall in place were visible through holes in the paper.
This revelation led to the further revelation that, where there are electrical fittings, such as the switches, the floors and walls are screwed in place. This is both exciting and useful, and it also showed that my father was more sensible than even he'd expected during the original construction project, 30-ish years ago. He'd also forgotten about the larger rods of wood he'd used to separate the floors and ceilings, and into which they're screwed. Many of his darker predictions about the difficulty of this refurbishment came from the belief that everything was glued together, so taking it apart would result in some breakage. The use of screws almost everywhere is very good news.
While talking about painting, we discussed the specifics of the staircase, which is actually a pretty brilliant piece of construction. The stairs themselves are cut from a single piece of wood, and there's a full bannister running up all the way to the landing, where it meets a safety rail - because you don't want your dolls falling down the stairs, do you? After joking about carpeting the staircase and adding little brass bits to keep the carpet in place, my father asked if I fancied the prospect of painting the staircase - the impression I got was that he wasn't especially keen to do it himself. After a closer examination, I accepted the challenge, adding only that it might be a bit easier if the ceiling/floor could come out... But I reckon it's perfectly doable even if the house remains intact throughout the painting phase.
My mother suggested that the gaps between the ceilings/floors should be covered over, as a certain four-year-old has a habit of 'inserting things into other things', her nose being the currently-favoured recipient of things. Kids, eh?
But I mentioned windows, didn't I?
Whereas there was a special offer on doors when my mother ordered four earlier in the month, there was no such offer on windows, so more caution has been exercised in this case. We currently have a pair of 'single' windows and a single 'double' window, just to see how they might fit, and to ascertain the potential usefulness of any properly-scaled items we might buy in the future. The windows aren't precisely the same type and, while I suspect the 'single' type would be sufficient for all the side windows, the existing holes are too wide... so either we'd need to fill them in, or go with larger windows.
The fact that the 'double' windows are 9-pane, versus the 4-pane 'single' means they don't quite work together, but other options are available or, failing that, we may be able to custom-make something suitable. Even if it's just a case of knocking out parts of the frame to make the 'doubles' into 2-pane windows (one from 6 panes, the other from the remaining 3, either horizontally or vertically), it shouldn't be too problematic.
By the time I left, all but one end of the roof had been stripped of paper... though whether this means we get to work on 'tiling' as soon as it's all stripped, or wait until the project is nearing completion, only time will tell...
For the most part, I think we're all feeling quite positive about this project still, though the expense of all the parts - eighteen windows, just for starters - is cause for some concern, and it's entirely possible that we'll end up filling in the eight side windows. They are something of an extravagance, but I reckon they really add to the place...
The viability - and wisdom - of allowing the roof to open was also discussed briefly... On the one hand, it gives us the option of another room/storage area... on the other hand, it's going to have a moody four year old playing with it (possibly five year old, before we're finished!), which could lead to slamming the roof, or slamming her fingers in the roof, or yanking the roof off its hinges, or God knows what other shenanigans. The same could be said for the hinged front and back walls of the house, so watch this space... There's not much more planning going into this refurbishment project than there was for the original build!
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